Around Maryland

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it has rejected Pennsylvania’s latest plan for reducing its pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, finding it falls well short of the state’s commitment. The agency forced Pennsylvania to resubmit its plan last year, warning that its first try was insufficient. But the state’s newest attempt also missed the mark, the EPA said, failing to account for 9.3 million pounds of nitrogen reductions that the state is supposed to achieve under a 2025 deadline.

The state park service’s superintendent and two local park managers are no longer employed by the state amid ongoing scrutiny of the agency’s culture and the criminal indictment of the Gunpowder Falls State Park manager. Gregg Bortz, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources that includes the park service, said Monday that superintendent Nita Settina, regional manager Steve McCoy and Gunpowder Falls assistant manager Dean Hughes were no longer with the agency.

Baltimore is again approaching a grim milestone in homicides for the eighth consecutive year. As of Monday afternoon, 299 people have been killed in the city so far this year. Since the weekend, police recategorized two of this year’s killings. One was a February shootout that is now listed as a justifiable homicide. In that incident, Marcus Harris shot Edward Johnson, who fired back. Both died from their injuries, and the death of Harris was ruled justified.

As a huge soccer fan, devouring the Premier League and Champions League, Mike Steenstra dreamt of opening his own soccer bar — a place for like-minded fans to soak in a unique atmosphere. But when it came down to it, between raising his two children and affording a mortgage with his wife, Steenstra felt he needed to reach one rung lower on a ladder of dreams. So instead, he’ll settle for keeping his day job while organizing a week-long watch party for the World Cup. It’s not his full dream, but it’ll do. For now. “Soccer bar was the goal,” Steenstra said, “and World Cup Pop Up was what it became eventually.” At the SoFive indoor soccer complex in Columbia, Steenstra has organized an event that encapsulates a World Cup experience.

Baltimoreans prepping for Thanksgiving dinner can add one more item to the shopping list this year: higher prices. Rising costs for everything from turkey to cans of pumpkin are putting a strain on budgets as the country continues to deal with burgeoning inflation rates. Overall inflation was 7.7% in October, according to the Consumer Price Index, which tracks the fluctuating costs of goods and services. The growth in grocery prices was even more substantial, at 12.4%. “It’s a real thing that it’s going to be more expensive,” said Laurence Ball, a professor of economics at the Johns Hopkins University. “There’s been inflation in general, but [the increasing cost of] food at home has been faster than inflation, and certainly faster than people’s wages have been growing.”

Writer and filmmaker John Waters is sometimes introduced as “the one and only,” but he’s the first to say that’s not accurate. “My father would take difference to ‘one and only,’ because I’m a Junior,” he told Asma Naeem, the interim co-director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, after she introduced him that way this week. The occasion was a press preview for “Coming Attractions: The John Waters Collection,” an exhibition of 83 works of contemporary art from Waters’ personal collection. They were culled from a larger group of about 375 works that Waters, a Baltimore native and BMA trustee, has agreed to donate to the museum when he dies. The museum mounted the exhibit, which opens Sunday and runs until April 16, 2023, as a sign of “coming attractions.”